by Harlan Coben
She handed him an old class photograph, the color not so much fading as greening from age. Fifteen kids flanked by two teachers, one a far younger Peggy Joyce. The years had not been unkind to her, but they’d passed anyway. A small black sign with the white lettering read SHADY WELLS MONTESSORI SCHOOL and the year.
“Which one is Dennis?”
She pointed to a boy sitting in the front row. He had a Prince Valiant cut and a face-splitting smile that never quite hit his eyes. “Can I have this?”
“If you think it will help.”
“It might.”
She nodded. “I better get back to my students.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you remember your preschool, Mr. Bolitar?”
Myron nodded. “Parkview Nursery School in Livingston, New Jersey.”
“How about your teachers? Do you remember them at all?”
Myron thought about it. “No.”
She nodded as though he’d answered correctly. “Good luck,” she said.
23
AgeComp. Or age-progression software, if you prefer.
Myron had learned a bit about it when searching for a missing woman named Lucy Mayor. The key was in the digital imaging. All Myron had to do—or in the case of their office, all Esperanza had to do—was take the class photograph and scan it into the computer. Then, using common software programs like Photoshop or Picture Publisher, you blow up the face of young Dennis Lex. AgeComp, a software program constantly being retooled and perfected by missing-children organizations, does the rest. Using advanced mathematical algorithms, AgeComp stretches, merges, and blends digital photographs of missing children and produces a color image of what they might look like today.
Naturally, a lot is left to chance. Scarring, facial fractures, facial hair, cosmetic surgery, hairstyle or, in the case of some of the older ones, male pattern baldness. Still, the class photo could be a serious lead.
When he was back in Manhattan, the cell phone rang.
“I spoke to the feds,” Win said.
“And?”
“Your impression is correct.”
“What impression?”
“They are indeed frightened.”
“Did you speak to PT?”
“I did. He put me onto the right person. They requested a face-to-face.”
“When?”
“Pretty pronto. We are, in fact, waiting in your office.”
“The feds are in my office right now?”
“Affirmative.”
“Be there in five.”
More like ten. When the elevator opened, Esperanza was sitting at Big Cyndi’s desk.
“How many?” he asked.
“Three,” Esperanza said. “One blond woman, one extra-strength dork, one nice suit.”
“Win’s with them?”
“Yep.”
He handed her the photograph and pointed to Dennis Lex’s face. “How long before we could get an age progression on this?”
“Jesus, when was this taken?”
“Thirty years ago.”
Esperanza frowned. “You know anything about age progression?”
“Some.”
“It’s mostly used to find missing kids,” she said. “And it’s usually used to age them five, maybe ten years.”
“But we can get something, right?”
“Something very rough, yeah maybe.” She flicked on the scanner and placed the photo facedown. “If they’re in the lab, we’ll probably have it by the end of the day. I’ll crop it and e-mail it over.”
“Do it later,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “Mustn’t keep the feds waiting. Our tax dollars and all that.”
“You want me in there?”
“You’re a part of everything that goes on here, Esperanza. Of course I want you in there.”
“I see,” she said. Then: “Is this the part where I blink back tears because you’re making me feel oh-so-special?”
Wiseass.
Myron opened his office door. Esperanza followed. Win sat behind Myron’s desk, probably so that none of the feds would. Win could be territorial—just one of the ways he was like a Doberman. Kimberly Green and Rick Peck rose with lack-of-sleep-luggage eyes and squared-off smiles. The third fed stayed in his seat, not moving, not even turning to see who’d entered. Myron saw his face and felt a jolt.
Whoa.
Win watched Myron, an amused smile curling the ends of his mouth. Eric Ford, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was the man in the suit. His presence meant one thing: This was serious big-time.
Kimberly Green pointed at Esperanza. “What’s she doing in here?”
“She’s my partner,” Myron said. “And it’s not polite to point.”
“Your partner? You think this is a business transaction?”
“She stays,” Myron said.
“No,” Kimberly Green said. She was still wearing the ball-and-chain earrings, still the jeans and black turtleneck, but the jacket now was spearmint green. “We’re not exactly thrilled about talking to you and Cheekbones boy over there”—she gestured toward Win—“but at least you have some clearance. We don’t know her. She goes.”
Win’s smile spread and his eyebrows did a quick up-and-down. Cheekbones. He liked that.
“She goes,” Green said again.
Esperanza shrugged. “No biggie,” she said.
Myron was about to say something, but Win shook his head. He was right. Save it for the important battles.
Esperanza left. Win got up and gave Myron the chair. He stood on Myron’s right, arms crossed, totally at ease. Green and Peck fidgeted. Myron turned to Eric Ford. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“But you know who I am,” Ford said. He had one of those smooth soft-rock-DJ voices.
“Yes.”
“And I know who you are,” he said. “So what would be the point?”
Oookay. Myron glanced back at Win. Win shrugged.
Ford nodded at Kimberly Green. She cleared her throat. “For the record,” she said, “we don’t think we should have to go through this.”
“Through what?”
“Telling you about our investigation. Debriefing you. As a good citizen, you should be willing to cooperate with our investigation because it’s the right thing to do.”
Myron looked at Win and said, “Oh boy.”
“Some aspects of an investigation need to be contained,” she continued. “You and Mr. Lockwood should understand that better than most. You should be anxious to cooperate with any federal investigation. You should respect what we’re trying to do here.”
“Right, okay, we respect. Can we skip ahead, please? You looked us up. You know we’ll keep our mouths shut. Otherwise none of us would be here.”
She folded her hands and put them in her lap. Peck kept his head down and scribbled notes, Lord knew on what. Myron’s decor maybe. “What we say here cannot leave this room. It is classified to the highest—”
“Skipping,” Myron said with an impatient hand roll. “Skipping.”
Green slid her eyes toward Ford. He nodded again. She took a deep breath and said, “We have Stan Gibbs under surveillance.”
She stopped, settled back. Myron waited a few seconds and then said, “Label me surprised.”
“That information is classified,” she said.
“Then I’ll leave it out of my diary.”
“He isn’t supposed to know.”
“Well, that’s usually implied with words like ‘classified’ and ‘surveillance.’ ”
“But Gibbs does know. He loses us whenever he really wants. Because when he’s out in public, we can’t get too close.”
“Why can’t you get too close?”
“He’ll see us.”
“But he already knows you’re there?”
“Yes.”
Myron looked up at Win. “Wasn’t there an Abbott and Costello skit that went like this?”
“Marx Brothers,” Win said.<
br />
“If we were out in the open about tailing him,” Green said, “the fact that he’s a target could become public knowledge.”
“And you’re trying to contain that?”
“Yes.”
“How long has he been under surveillance?”
“Well, it’s not that simple. He’s been out of range a lot—”
“How long?”
Again Green looked at Ford. Again Ford nodded. She balled her hands into fists. “Since the first article on the kidnappings appeared.”
Myron sat back, feeling something akin to a head rush. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but damned if he wasn’t. The article came flooding back to him—the sudden disappearances, the awful phone calls, the constant, eternal anguish, the picket-fenced lives suddenly bulldozed over by inexplicable evil.
“My God,” Myron said. “Stan Gibbs was telling the truth.”
“We never said that,” Kimberly Green said.
“I see. So you’ve been tailing him because you don’t like his syntax?”
Silence.
“The articles were true,” Myron said. “And you’ve known it all along.”
“What we did or did not know is not your concern.”
Myron shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said. “So let me see if I got this straight. You have a serial psycho out there who snatches people out of the blue and torments their families. You want to keep a lid on it because if word got out to the public, you’d have a panic situation. Then the psycho goes directly to Stan Gibbs and suddenly the story is in the public domain …” Myron’s voice died off, seeing that his logic trail had hit a major pothole. He frowned and forged ahead. “I don’t know how that old novel or the plagiarism charges tie in. But either way, you decided to ride it. You let Gibbs get fired and disgraced, probably in part because you were pissed off that he upset your investigation. But mostly”—he spotted what he thought was a clearing—“but mostly you did it so you could watch him. If the psycho contacted him once, you figured, he’d probably do it again—especially if the articles had been discredited.”
Kimberly Green said, “Wrong.”
“But close.”
“No.”
“The kidnappings Gibbs wrote about took place, right?”
She hesitated, gave Ford an eye check. “We can’t verify all of his facts.”
“Jesus, I’m not taking a deposition here,” Myron said. “Was his column true, yes or no?”
“We’ve told you enough,” she said. “It’s your turn.”
“You haven’t told me squat.”
“And you’ve told us less.”
Negotiating. Life is being a sports agent—constant negotiating. He had learned the importance of leverage, of doling out, of being fair. People forget that last one, and it always costs you in the end. The best negotiator isn’t the one who gets the whole pie while leaving scant crumbs behind. The best negotiator is the one who gets what he wants while keeping the other side happy. So normally, Myron would dole out a little something here. Classic give-and-take. But not this time. He knew better. Once he told them the reason for his visit to Stan Gibbs, his leverage would be zippo.
The best negotiator, like the best species, also knows how to adapt.
“First answer my question,” Myron said. “Yes or no, was the story Stan Gibbs wrote true?”
“There is no yes-or-no answer to that,” she said. “Parts were true. Parts were not true.”
“For example?”
“The young couple was from Iowa, not Minnesota. The missing father had three children, not two.” She stopped, folded her hands.
“But there have been kidnappings?”
“We knew about those two,” she said. “We had no information about the missing college student.”
“Probably because the psycho got to her parents. They probably never reported it.”
“That’s our theory,” Kimberly Green said. “But we don’t know for sure. Still, there are major discrepancies. The families swear they never spoke to him, for example. Many of the phone calls and events don’t match what we know to be true.”
Myron saw more clearing. “So you asked Gibbs about it? About his sources?”
“Yes.”
“And he refused to tell you anything.”
“That’s right.”
“So you destroyed him.”
“No.”
“The one part I don’t get is the plagiarism,” Myron said. “I mean, did you guys somehow set that up? I can’t see how. Unless you made up a book and … no, that’s too far-fetched. So what’s the deal with that?”
Kimberly Green leaned forward. “Tell us why you went to his apartment.”
“Not until—”
“For several months we couldn’t find Stan Gibbs,” she interrupted. “We think maybe he left the country. But since he’s moved into that condo, he’s always alone. As I said before, he loses us sometimes. But he never accepts visitors. Several people have tracked him down. Old friends even. They come to his door or they call on the phone. And you know what always happens, Myron?”
Myron didn’t like her tone of voice.
“He sends them away. Every single time. Stan Gibbs sees no one. Except you.”
Myron looked up at Win. Win nodded very slowly. Myron took a look at Eric Ford before going back to Kimberly Green. “You think I’m the kidnapper?”
She leaned back with a partial shrug, looking satiated. Turning the tables and all that. “You tell us,” she said.
Win started for the door. Myron rose and followed.
“Where the hell are you two going?” Green asked.
Win grabbed the knob. Myron headed around the desk and said, “I’m a suspect. I’m not talking until I have an attorney present. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Hey, we’re just talking here,” Kimberly Green said. “I never said I thought you were the kidnapper.”
“Sounded that way to me,” Myron said. “Win?”
“He snatches hearts,” Win told her, “not people.”
“You got something to hide?” Green said.
“Just his fondness for cyber pornography,” Win said. Then: “Oops.”
Kimberly Green stood and blocked Myron’s path. “We think we know about the missing college student,” she said, her eyes locked hard on his. “Do you want to know how we found out about it?”
Myron kept still.
“Through her father. He got a call from the kidnapper. I don’t know what was said. He hasn’t said a word since. He’s catatonic. Whatever that psycho said to that girl’s father put him in a padded room.”
Myron felt the room shrink, the walls closing in.
“We haven’t found any bodies yet, but we’re pretty sure he kills them,” she went on. “He kidnaps them, does Lord knows what, and makes the families suffer interminably. And you know he won’t stop.”
Myron kept his eyes steady. “What’s your point?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. So stop playing stupid games.”
She said nothing.
“I want to hear it from your mouth,” Myron said. “Do you think I’m involved in this, yes or no?”
Eric Ford took this one. “No.”
Kimberly Green slid back into her chair, her eyes never leaving Myron’s. Eric Ford made a big hand gesture. “Please sit down.”
Myron and Win moved back to their original positions.
Eric Ford said, “The novel exists. So do the passages Stan Gibbs plagiarized. The book was sent to our office anonymously—more specifically, to Special Agent Green here. We admit that we found that issue confusing at first. On the one hand, Gibbs knows about the kidnappings. On the other hand, he doesn’t know everything and he clearly copied excerpts from an old, out-of-print mystery novel.”
“There’s an explanation,” Myron said. “The kidnapper might have read the book. He might have identified with the character, become a copycat of sorts.”
“We considered that possibility,” Eric Ford said, “but we don’t believe that’s the case here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Does it involve trigonometry?”
“You still think this is a joking manner?”
“You still think it’s smart to play games?”
Ford closed his eyes. Green looked on edge. Peck continued scribbling notes. When Ford opened his eyes, he said, “We don’t believe Stan Gibbs made up the crimes,” he said. “We believe he perpetrated them.”
Myron felt a pow. He looked up at Win. Nothing.
“You have some background in the criminal mind, do you not?” Ford asked.
Myron might have nodded.
“Well, here we have an old pattern with a new twist. Arsonists love to watch firemen put out the blaze. Oft-times they’re even the ones who report the fire. They play the good Samaritan. Murderers love to attend the funerals of their victims. We videotape funerals. I’m sure you know this.”
Myron nodded again.
“Sometimes killers make themselves part of the story.” Eric Ford was gesturing a lot now, his knotted hands rising and falling as though this were a press conference in too big a room. “They claim to be witnesses. They become the innocent bystanders who happened to find the body in the brush. You’re familiar with this moth-near-the-flame phenomenon, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“So what could be more enticing than being the only columnist to report the story? Can you imagine the high? How mind-bogglingly close to the investigation you’d be. The brilliance of your deception—for a psychotic, it’s almost too delicious. And if you are perpetrating these crimes to get attention, then here you get a double dose. Attention as the serial kidnapper, one. Attention as the brilliant reporter with the scoop and possible Pulitzer, two. You even get the bonus attention of a man bravely defending the First Amendment.”
Myron was holding his breath. “That’s a hell of a theory,” he said.
“You want more?”
“Yes.”
“Why won’t he answer any of our questions?”
“You said it yourself. First Amendment.”
“He’s not a lawyer or psychiatrist.”
“But he is a reporter,” Myron said.
